


The Light is No Mystery

by jaywynd



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Inspired by Richard Siken, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-06 17:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14061597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaywynd/pseuds/jaywynd
Summary: The mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.





	The Light is No Mystery

**Author's Note:**

> i am fond of pining
> 
> (this has been in the WIP folder collecting dust for so long because i never thought it was good enough. It's Time)

Luke plays with the shadows. He’s a child, he lives on a planet that’s made of sun and dirt and there’s nothing else to play with, so he twists his hands into shapes that make him think of somewhere cooler, somewhere there aren’t lizards that creep into the house at night and short, boxy creatures that shift their form right before dusk, bulking up for warmth. He talks to his own shadow, the other outline of a boy. Luke confesses his fantasy of taking Owen and Beru and himself so far away they never have to worry about water taxes again.

-

Luke watches Han; watches Han because he’s hungry for it, starving for the way Han looks like Tatooine, feels like home in the most inexplicable way. He’s made up of light, strong hands and golden skin, hair that’s not quite black or brown or blond. Luke looks at Han and thinks he’s the most beautiful creature Luke’s ever seen. It feels like hero-worship, it feels like the beginning of something bigger _than_.

-

Luke doesn’t know how it feels like he’s with his dad when he meets Obi-wan, it’s just that it does. He knows that he’ll never understand their past, never understand how Obi-wan cared for his father so greatly he had his lightsaber in his possession, but when he looks into those pained, dark eyes, all he can do is smile. He goes, then, because he’s got no home and he’s got no no-one, except a stranger that doesn’t feel so strange and a hope, one of finding belonging, his place, a hope of experiencing his universe.

-

Luke watches Han; watches Han because he’s hungry for it, starving for the way Han looks like space, feels like home in the most inexplicable way. He’s made up of dark, strong hands and shadows under his jaw, eyes fathomless and dark, like you could fall and never stop. Luke looks at Han and thinks that there have been things Luke’s waited all his life for and he’s never found, things he might never find. It doesn’t scare him, not the way he thinks it’s supposed to. He reaches out, sometimes, pointlessly because he never does touch, flipping a harmless switch right by Han’s back or arm or something, letting the brush of contact he wants go undone.

-

Luke falls and scrapes his knee a day after telling the shadow boy his secret. He runs, crying, to Beru in the house. She begs him to stop crying, hands shaking as she inspects his bloody leg. He can't stop his sniffling and her voice goes high and strange as she tries to tell him everything will be alright. Owen, looming in the doorway, clears his throat. He gently nudges Beru's panicky frame out of the way and bandages Luke up neatly. He kisses Luke on the forehead and tells him to go play.

-

Luke thinks that Han is the perfect amalgamation of light and dark, the way his body seems to draw shadows out to him, reaching for him like metal to magnets, and the way he seems to give off light, like a radiant glow. Luke catches him changing, shirt off and muscles shifting beneath his skin, back checkered with dark and light, scars and burns and stretches of smooth skin. Luke catches him walking down the corridor of the ship, not quite skulking, like he can never really shake the feeling that he has to hide. Luke finds him beautiful. He’s never found anything but the horizon beautiful before.

-

Luke feels cheated, like his life was meant to be terrifying and dirty this whole time. Like he was raised on a planet made of sun and not much else just so that when the darkness finally fell he deserved it from being in the light so long. He feels bitter, like a possession, stamped out and packaged for the universe. Here’s your hero, here’s your story. Luke doesn’t get a say in it, feels like a lost child on a street, or better yet, one of those light cars that follow a painted line on the streets of cities and only that painted line. He looks at his shadow, remembers years ago how he wanted different things. All he wants now is for it to be over.

-

Luke sometimes thinks Han looks back, but he’s just looking at Leia, who is brilliant and fierce and knows her place in the galaxy like Luke never could. He loves her, warm and certain about it, how she’s the only family he’s ever missed. But it’s Han that feels like home, Han that smiles and whispers to him quietly, Han that looks like all the things Luke needs to be, made of the kind of stuff Luke has only dreamt about.

-

Luke learns so many things from Obi-Wan, but it's Yoda that teaches him control, gives him what little Luke can have from a life that was never meant to be his, fragmented and unfair. He's a Jedi now, or something, but it still feels like his entire life spins so far out of control so fast, and still he  _wants_ but cannot let himself have. He watches Leia kiss Han, he watches Han watch Leia. It hurts, deep and low in his stomach but he's never going to say it out loud. He can't look Leia in the eye and tell her that she can't have Han because it's killing him. And she'd step away if he asked her. He won't.

-

Luke's alone in the cockpit of the  _Falcon_ , avoiding the people down below. It's loud down there, people laughing and celebrating in the hangar. The rebellion has suffered a rare win and Luke feels blank and ashen; those shining faces making him feel terrible for not feeling good enough. He'd taken one look at Leia's tear-stained smile and escaped onto the ship, unable to deal with her. And of course it's Han that finds him an hour later, and it's Han that sits in the co-pilot seat, smiling that smile at Luke (just for Luke) and asking him if he'd like to run away together.

 -

Luke knows science. You have to, if you want to fly anything. He knows about Newton's laws, about motion. He thinks, if Han’s the unstoppable object, he must be the immovable one. Leia looks at him, calm and quiet and he knows that she knows. Leia is gravity. She's always been gravity.

-

Luke walks alone in the gardens, listless and aching. He feels too young and too old all at once. He doesn't know how to verbalize his absolution, the terror that he wasn't meant to witness apocalypse, that he was meant to  _be_ it. They've defeated the Empire, sure, but where does it end? Does it end? He looks at Han, at those fathomless eyes that never reveal anything, and Luke thinks  _it doesn't really matter anyway._

-

Luke eats the dagdag fruit the Ewoks hand him, watches them chatter and dance around, working to expand their forest huts. Chewie, unimpressed and made uncomfortable by the tiny creatures, presses close to Luke and grumbles intermittently. Luke smiles at him, listening mostly to the sound of Han clanking around the _Millenium Falcon_  cursing to himself. It's a good day, he decides. He bites into the sweet-smelling fruit, juice dribbling down his chin. The seeds get stuck between his teeth. 

 -

Luke knows his body. Knows his mind. Feels the quiet in his soul. His heart and lungs and stomach are the traitors, clenching and freefalling at random intervals around Han, forcing Luke to stop, to breathe. He looks at his friends sometimes, fights the urge to ask if they've ever felt their lungs get caught in a bear trap, if their heart has ever twisted and folded in on itself. He's not supposed to be that little kid, not anymore. He's a Jedi. He's so much more than what he used to be. (Part of him knows that's a lie. That's the part he ignores.)

-

Leia learns many things over the years. She learns languages, cultures, what leading people to their deaths feels like. She learns food and bodies and herself. She prides herself in having seen everything already. She's never seen someone look at anyone the way Luke looks at Han.

-

Han never kissed Luke, but, oh God, how we wanted to.

-

"Where's Han?"

 

(no one ever answers his question)


End file.
